"La Coruña is one long sea front," said my taxi driver as we rounded the headland towards Riazor, the huge urban beach that is the major natural feature of this northern Spanish city. On the sand, surfers were polishing their boards and pale-skinned families, enjoying the sudden Atlantic summer, were energetically doing what families do on beaches.
From my hotel, I could see the crouching form of Riazor stadium, home of Deportivo La Coruña ("el Depor") and one of Spain's cathedrals of football. And at the end of the beach, the new Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Muncyt), glittering in the afternoon sun. The museum, opened in May, is a masterpiece of take-no-prisoners modernism by architects Victoria Acebo and Angel Alonso, and the city's most talked-about new attraction. Outwardly it is a stunning concatenation of glass and concrete; inwardly, it's an engaging attempt to make Spain feel good about its technological heritage.
La Coruña is hardly a great techno-metropolis, but it has the big-town brashness of a place that still lives mainly on manufacturing. It also has the bracing saltiness of a harbour city, and a Brighton-like feel in the bric-a-brac and street-fashion shops of the grungy Orzán district behind Riazor beach. For centuries it lived under the long shadow of Santiago de Compostela, whose clerical pomp and cultural dominion it fiercely resented. But La Coruña is fighting back. For two summers (in 2010 and 2011) it hosted a satellite version of Barcelona's Sónar festival, capitalising on the busy local club scene. Now the city is hoping that the Muncyt will put it on the map, Guggenheim-style, as an exhilarating and original short-break destination.
As night fell I set out for Calle Estrella, La Coruña's prime tapas territory. It was Monday, but the bars on Estrella were heaving, the mild July night filling the terrace tables with good-natured, raucous crowds. At Cunqueiro, a cheery old tavern with slate floors and stone walls, I ate a first-night supper of octopus with potatoes (pulpo á feira) accompanied by a glass of Albariño. It felt like a culinary "welcome to Galicia".
El Depor recently won promotion from the Spanish second division, but in gastronomic terms La Coruña is always in the primera liga. From the cheap-as-chips tascas of Calle Barrera, where locals go for china bowls of Ribeiro wine and platters of winkles, to top-end marisquerías (shellfish joints) and restaurantes de autor (chef-driven restaurants) such as Domus and Alborada, there is quality at every level.
The city is handsome yet somehow rough-hewn, with islands of gentrification around Plaza de Lugo, where a decorative modernista style adorns the facades of early-20th-century mansion blocks, and the picture-pretty medieval Ciudad Vieja.
La Coruña has a number of surprising strings to its bow – not least the Zara connection. The global-village high-street fashion brand was born here, and rag-trade aficionados might want to check out the first-ever Zara store (opened in 1975 at Calle Juan Flórez) and the old-town house of Amancio Ortega, godfather of the brand, who started out selling aprons to housewives and is now one of the world's 10 richest men.
For insight into La Coruña's history and culture, I called Suso Martinez, whose tours of his city are more like theatrical performances. For the first of three sorties, Suso appeared in fancy dress as Sir John Moore, the British general fatally wounded at the battle of La Coruña in 1809, to lead me round the general's granite mausoleum in the garden of San Carlos, high above the battlements.
On the second day he materialised as Mil Espáne, a mythological warrior in helmet and skimpy kilt, to illustrate the importance of La Coruña to the ancient Celts. "To the lighthouse!" he intoned gravely as we headed for the square-sided Torre de Hércules, the world's only functioning Roman lighthouse and a symbol of the city on its lonely promontory.
In Suso's most convincing role, that of 19th-century philanthropist Eugenio da Guarda, he brilliantly conjured up the liberal, economically buoyant La Coruña which the Picasso family found when they arrived from Málaga in 1890. Here is another of the city's surprises: the Pablo Picasso connection. The artist lived here for five years when his father was a master at the art school.
For three days the weather in La Coruña had defied Galicia's (increasingly unjustified) reputation for inclemency. From a bakery I picked up one of the world's best picnic foods, an empanada – a flat pie with a range of fillings from tuna and peppers to ground meat and onions – and headed to Riazor beach with a few cold cans of Estrella Galicia, La Coruña's signature beer. I nipped between the surfers and the families and plunged into the sea. The water was, rather like the city and its people, a good deal less chilly than you might think. La Coruña is, in every sense, a breath of fresh air.
Essentials
Paul Richardson was a guest of Turismo La Coruña (turismocoruna.com) and the Hotel Meliá Maria Pita, Avda de Pedro Barrié de la Maza 1 (+34 981 205000, melia.com, doubles from €69). Vueling Airlines (vueling.com) flies daily from Heathrow to La Coruña from €69.99 one way
